Keeping a logbook

New years, new resolutions. This year I indent to be more organized. One of the targets is to keep a logbook. Idea is from James Routley and it worths a read. However, for my case I needed some updates.

Writing a logbook is not only good for logging day-to-day progress but also a handy reference for daily stand-ups in scrum meetings. I wanted to have my logbook at hand when I start my daily.

I used Google Drive for synchronization however viewing markdown files on mobile proved to be a misery. I converted markdown to pdf and that is much better.

Following examples are for MacOS but it is similar in any system.

Dependencies

Install nodejs, npm and markdown-pdf.

brew install nodejs npm
npm install -g markdown-pdf

Install Google Drive for Mac.

Create your logbook directory

mkdir ~/logbook

Put the following into your /.profile

function lb() {
     vim ~/logbook/$(date '+%Y-%m-%d').md
     markdown-pdf ~/logbook/$(date '+%Y-%m-%d').md -o /Volumes/GoogleDrive/My\ Drive/logbook/$(date '+%Y-%m-%d').pdf
 }

Usage

Each time you type lb you will be prompted to vi to log your day. Each time you save, PDF will be saved in your Google Drive.

You can now view your day anytime, anywhere!